Friday, January 12, 2007

Happy to be unhappy

I talked to a good friend today who is going through a lot of crises right now; not the quotidian crises like having a fight with a friend or having a lead fall through or something. Like big deal, address-changing stuff. And he was telling me these things sort of matter-of-factly. And I said, "I'm sorry things are hard for you right now. It sounds very sad." And he said, "I'm not any more sad than I ever have been in my life."

It just made me consider the roles of sadness and contentedness in the human condition. I think sometimes it's just easier to stay unhappy than to consider what life might be like if you made some changes. This took me a long time to figure out, but I think it's not the happiness that scares people. I think it's just the change -- any change. I mean, Luis says that you have to suffer, it's just a part of life. I understand that. But I also saw on "Six Feet Under" the dad character saying, "There's no more inherent value to your suffering." And you know, that makes sense to me too.

I guess I suffer at work to help make the paper better in my eyes. And I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to battle for what I think is right, and that certainly takes a toll on me. But I can't see a reason to suffer in my personal life if it's something that I can change. Maybe I'm lucky, or naive, or forgetting something. Probably. But that's what it looks like right this minute.